The present invention relates to a packaging mechanism and method and more particularly to a packaging mechanism and method which is adapted to be used for form a shrink wrap package which will shrink wrap stacks of paper of different sizes.
In the prior art, a number of shrink wrapping machines have been in use which are adapted to be adjusted to shrink wrap packages of different sizes. In doing this, a shrink wrapping machine is adjusted to shrink wrap packages of the same size for a particularly run of same sized packages to be wrapped. If a different size package is to be wrapped, the machine is adjusted so that the machine will now package a series of packages all having the same size but different than the original size batch. If a third series of packages having different sizes to be wrapped, the machine is again adjusted to wrap a number of packages of the same size but different than the other two sizes. The adjustment of the machine can be manual or by some automatic means.
There is no shrink wrap machine that will take various sizes of packages dynamically and apply the proper amount of plastic film for that package, be it large or small, nor is there any mechanism for automatically adjusting the machine for that particular size package and dispense the film so that the shrink wrapping will be proper. In other words, existing machines do not have the capability of packaging bundles of documents of different sizes as each different size is presented to the wrapping machines. In some industries, such as the insurance industry, insurance contracts are of different thicknesses depending on the types of papers in each insurance contract. Hence, for example, one insurance policy may be about 1,000 pages and the very next policy may be 50 pages and the one after that may be about 750 pages. As another example, the packages being shrink wrapped may vary from one inch to three inches one after the other. In addition, the packages being processed may vary in width and/or length as well as in height. If all these are to be shrink wrapped and are presented to the shrink wrapping machine one after the other, the machine would have to be stopped and adjusted for each package. It will be appreciated that this would be time consuming, expensive and impractical.
Presently, shrink wrapping machines are adjustable to handle various size packages. However, manual adjustments must be made for each size package that is to be shrink wrapped. This is only natural in that probably 99 percent of the shrink wrapping machines are packaging the same item over and over again. However, in the electronic publishing field it is possible to turn out a 3 page report followed by a 40 page report, etc., followed by a six page report. This is more the normal operation rather than the exception in non-impact computer printing. Since these printed reports must be sent to various offices or locations, it is necessary to wrap them in a package suitable for the size of the reports.